Spring Fall

Gerard Manley Hopkins( 1844- 1889)

The surface meaning of the poem can be interpreted as thus: the poet or the speaker addresses a yong
/small girl and asks her a question in the beginning . The question is whether she is sad that all the trees
of a certain place called ' Goldengrove' shed their leaves making themselves bare ,

'Margeret , are you grieving

over Goldengrove unleaving?'

Then he asks the girl whether she takes this falling of leaves in Autumn as serious as grown up
men take some matters seriously and ponder over them,

' Leaves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts for, can you?'

Next the poet expresses his dismay over the reality which Margeret as a small child does not
understand .That is when she grows up , she may gradually become indifferent to the reality of trees
shedding their leaves .She may grow cold to that reality even if all the forests lie bare without the leaves
of trees,

'Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by , nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leaf meal lie'

In the 9th, 10th and 11th lines , the poet says thay the child may also weep when sh e is grown
up . But now she may cry for reasons about which she has an awareness, understanding . Earlier the
child did not know why leaves fall from trees in Autumn but she was sad over it and cried . Now she may
cry for reasons she knows well. Eventhough she is grown up, still she may cry because the sources of
sorrow are the same.

Somehow Margeret is crying or grieving now over a reality which she cannot understand
plainly.She got a shock when she saw trees shedding their leaves losing their beauty.So she cried. But she
does not know that she is crying over the reality of changing and growing old.she does not know that the
trees of her 'Golden grove' shedding their leaves convey the message of eternal reality of change- that
things will not remain the same.It is man's fate that he is born to undergo this experience of change or
transcience which is a sad thing for him. Thus one may argue that when Margeret gets sad over trees
shedding leaves , what she really cries over is her growing old though she does not know it.
 When the peom is taken as a whole what one can gather is that the speaker has dealt with
the theme of transcience of life , of everything and man's dismay over this reality of changing nature of
everything .For man , it is a saddening thing to see himself changing and growing old. To become
indifferent to changes that one sees in his life is also a saddening thing .This is conveyed in the lines,

' Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by , nor spare a sigh'

When the poet utters the exclamation ''Ah!'' what we can gather is that he himself is sad
over the reality that the girl mentioned in the poem will grow up to become indifferent to the things to
which now she is sensitive . The fact that he is sad over the reality of the girl becoming indifferent to the
changes around her is that he is dismayed to experience this reality of transcience of life; the quality of
changing and growing old and dying one day.

Thus man is born to experience and realize this changing nature of everything . It is an
eternal reality . No one can change the course of nature.

*. Discuss how Hopkins deals with the eality of transcience of life in his poem '' Spring Fall''

**. Compare and contrast , the two poems ,'' Among School Children'' and ''Spring Fall''

* Specially focus on the theme of transcient nature of man/life and how it is dealt with in the two
poems